Jim DeMint

March 18, 2011

March 10, 2011

-- Rick Santorum fancies himself an intellectual.
-- Jim DeMint is building his own campaign committee.
-- Another Wisconsin Republican state senator admits that scrapping collective bargaining is all about 2012.

February 11, 2011

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is known as much for its after-parties—where buttoned-up conservatives let loose over libations—as it is known for its official agenda of letting GOP kingmakers and presidential hopefuls vie for the party’s favor. This year’s most talked-about party happened Thursday night, under the dimly lit chandeliers and moody, faux-brocade decor of the 18th Street Lounge, in Washington’s Dupont Circle neighborhood. The toast of the party was GOProud, the ultra-conservative, GLBT advocacy group.

February 10, 2011

Imagine if the board of a Fortune 500 company required the company’s vice presidents to obtain board approval before implementing any decision. Now imagine that the board is highly polarized and its members are at each other’s throats. A recipe for corporate gridlock, right?
Amazingly, House Speaker John Boehner, Senator Jim DeMint, and other prominent Republicans are embracing this dubious chain-of-command for the federal government.

January 18, 2011

There are plenty of conservatives who can't wait for a knockdown brawl over the federal debt ceiling this spring. As South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint put it, "We need to have a showdown, at this point, that we're not going to increase our debt ceiling anymore." Likewise, three GOP presidential hopefuls (Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Pence) told The Wall Street Journal today that they opposed any lifting of the debt ceiling by Congress unless it was accompanied by strict spending cuts.

January 07, 2011

You knew President Obama would cave on the Bush tax cuts when he first started saying that a deal was going to be made. In a brinkmanship fight, the most important weapon is the willingness to allow failure, or at least credibly threaten to do so.
So these comments from Paul Ryan on raising the debt ceiling are a red -- or rather, white -- flag:
Some conservative Republicans have urged their GOP colleagues to resist raising the ceiling -- which currently clocks in at $14.3 trillion -- under any circumstances. Rep.

December 23, 2010

With all the hullabaloo surrounding Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell and Joe Miller during the midterms, it was easy to lose track of some equally conservative, but less flamboyant, candidates. And it seems safe to say that no Tea Partier had more success while garnering less national attention than Mike Lee. While running for Senate, the 39-year-old Utah Republican proposed dismantling the Department of Education and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

December 09, 2010

WASHINGTON—What does President Obama think of those who fought and bled to pass his bills in Congress (in some cases losing in this year's election for their pains) while also defending him against wild charges from the right wing?

December 08, 2010

Tim Fernholz offers four suggestions for how liberals could make the tax deal more appetizing. Liberals might have some leverage here to improve the deal a bit, although I doubt that there’s any wiggle room at all on the estate tax -- as it is, Jim DeMint is already against the deal based on the retention of any estate tax at all.
Before I offer an alternative list, I should point out one important aspect of this: electoral politics is zero-sum, but policy is definitely not zero-sum. In electoral politics, for every gain Democrats make there has to be a GOP loss.

November 10, 2010

An earmark ban would be, at best, about one-millionth as important as conservatives make it out to be. Yet Mitch McConnell's fervent opposition is kind of strange:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is maneuvering behind the scenes to defeat a conservative plan aimed at restricting earmarks, setting up a high-stakes showdown that pits the GOP leader and his “Old Bull” allies against Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and a new breed of conservative senators.